


Icarus Rising

by INKQueen



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Gen, I will curse you with one (1) nasty papercut, Implied Suicide Attempt, Meta, and I aint out here tryin to start fights, and I swear to heck, but I wrote this to to be platonic best friends, cause it isn't my business who you ship, identity crisis, if any of y'all try to read Birdflash into this, that kinda goes with the identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 10:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14447385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INKQueen/pseuds/INKQueen
Summary: Dick is having a very bad day when he saves someone who falls. An identity crisis ensues.





	Icarus Rising

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline wise, this occurs somewhere shortly before Forever Evil, while Damian was dead.

_ Fire me, _

_ Like Icarus, _

_ Gently into the sun. _

 

Dick’s day hadn’t gone great. It had started with a drawn-out fight with Jason that had gone from verbal to physical. Then he’d fought with Bruce  _ about _ the fight with Jason. His mentor still didn’t seem to think that reaching out to Jason was a good idea.

Of course, the sucky day was just the tip of the iceberg. There had been a breakout at Arkham last Wednesday. The fallout had been bad. The roundup fell apart. People died.

Tim hadn’t left his room for nearly a month, just muttered he was working on something and shut the door and Dick had no idea how to help. Barbara still wasn’t speaking to him after the incident in Metropolis. 

And there was a hole in his heart where Damian lived.  _ Used _ to live. It had been pierced through with a katana and Dick had only recently been able to stop the fresh bleeding.

Loud Ukrainian dance music throbbed through the streets of Bludhaven. Dick took a deep, shaky breath. He could feel the fragility of his own emotions, a glass full to the brim, trembling on the edge, rattling against granite. He breathed again. That’s why he was here. Not in Gotham, where he might run into a familiar face in the dark, but here Bludhaven. Here, where he could do what he did best. Where he could be the hero, the blessedly anonymous hero. That’s who he was -- Nightwing, hero of Gotham and Bludhaven, even when Dick Grayson’s life was falling apart around his ears.

A shriek pierced the air and Dick saw a black shadow against the charcoal sky, just tipping off the edge of a nearby roof, falling. The grappling fired -- Dick didn’t even have to think -- and he swung. He caught her around the waist at the lowest point of his arc before releasing the grappling and bringing them to the ground as gently as he could. The woman staggered a few feet away from him, trying to catch her breath. Dick reeled in his grappling line, feeling a bit more comfortable. If nothing else, he could stop little tragic accidents from happening to other people. Sometimes he didn’t need to save the whole world. Just someone else’s world, if not his.

“What the fuck was that?” The woman whirled on Dick, seething with anger. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

Dick’s stomach dropped into a pit of confusion and his mind scrambled to catch up. “You were falling, so I caught you and, um --”

“What the hell made you think I wanted to be caught?”  she spat. “You ever think maybe I’m tired of being trapped in this god-forsaken hellhole of a city?”

Dick was falling, reeling. “I-I-I’m sorry--”

The woman stalked right up to him, pushing her face up into his. “Who died and gave you the right to decide who lives and who dies?” Her words dripped like venom into his ears. “News flash, you birdbrained freak. Some people don’t want to be saved.”

Then she walked away, leaving Dick shattered in her wake. 

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there.

_ What the fuck was that? _

Eventually he realized he was crying.

_ Why the fuck would you do that? _

Eventually he realized it was starting to rain.

_ What the hell made you think I wanted to be caught? _

Eventually his feet started walking,

_ You ever think maybe-- _

walking,

_ \--I’m tired of being trapped-- _

taking him back to his apartment.

_ \--in this god-forsaken hellhole of a city? _

The door clicked shut behind him.

_ Who died and gave you the right to decide-- _

Dick crumpled to the floor.

_ \--who lives and who dies? _

He felt empty. Maybe there were tears still, maybe not. He couldn’t tell. His eyes and mind were lost in a mist of salty, vaporized tears.

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

How many people had he saved?

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

In the last year? In the past ten? In his lifetime?

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

And how many of them resented him for it?

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

How many people had died because of him?

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

He’d always rationalized it by reminding himself that at the end of the day, he saved lives.

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

No matter what happened to the people closest to him, he could move on because there was still hero work to be done.

_ What gave him the right to decide who lived and who died? _

_ And who was Dick Grayson if not someone who could save people?  _

He’d always known he wouldn’t be able to save his family when it came right down to it. God, with their line of work? He’d hoped, and been crushed.

But what if…

Dick couldn’t breathe.

The glass was broken. The darkness was escaping. Dick could feel the cold and the numb crawling through his veins and into his soul. There were no more tears now, just the floor beneath him and the aching dark inside.

Eventually his body shut down. He slept where he lay, long and dreamless. Dick woke up with a mouth like dry cotton. He got up, went the bathroom and stripped off his Nightwing suit. He held the top in his hands, staring at the blue emblem splashed across the chest. It took a moment for it to register in his mind. When it did, Dick seized with violent revulsion. He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet, convinced he was going to vomit. A few hacking coughs were all he had in him, and they soon turned to dry sobs.

Dick staggered out of the bathroom, sinking to the floor, back against the couch, facing the open door of the bathroom. He sat there in a haze, listening to the tick of the kitchen clock until he felt a spark inside of him.

_ Well, that was the end of it then, if he wasn’t doing any good. _

Anger ignited, spreading to his limbs, a sudden burst of energy. He roared at the top of his lungs, tearing back into the bathroom and snatching up his costume. He sprinted to his bedroom, threw open the window and lunged out on the fire escape. It was still raining. He held the suit out over the edge and his fingers spasmed in their grip on the fabric.

_ Let it fall. It’ll be gone forever. _

In the last moment, his energy failed him. He dropped to his knees, the grate biting his skin, clutching the costume in one hand, the railing in the other. He thought he should be sad, upset, but it was just the rain making his face wet. Everything had gone numb again.

He went back inside. Tossed the costume in a corner. Went back to sitting on the floor, letting the rain drip out of his hair. Dick stayed that way until his body shut down again.

Time passed in a gray cycle of dark numbness and dark sleep. The words still rattled around in his head.

_ Who gave you the right... _

_ Why the fuck would you do that? _

_ Some people don’t want to be saved. _

Those and other things. The words he’d said, and hadn’t said, ones that had been said to him, before people died. They took root.

Eventually, he got sick of not feeling, so he started to drink. He’d never been much of a drinker, but the alcohol helped. Mostly he cried a lot. Once or twice he got angry again. He punched holes in the walls. He didn’t know where his phone was. He didn’t care enough to find it.

There was a pounding on the door.

“Dick! Dick Grayson! Open the door, or I swear I’ll vibrate it off its hinges.”

Dick rolled over in his place on the floor, putting his back to the door.

“Or maybe I’ll just eat it! I bet I could.”

Wally’s joke landed on deaf ears. After a few more seconds, the handle began to rattle, then thunked onto the floor. Wally strolled in, eyes immediately fixed on his best friend. He sat down next to Dick and hauled him into a sitting position against Wally’s shoulder.

Tears began leaking out of the corners of Dick’s eyes.

“Wally?” His voice cracked.

“Yeah?”

“Do you………… is it possible to be a hero? To really save people? Cause…….I don’t…”

Dick broke down, sobbing hard into his best friend’s shoulder.

Wally sighed heavily and leaned his cheek against Dick’s black hair. As Dick’s crying subsided into hiccuping, Wally gave his shoulder a hard squeeze.

“I don’t know, man. But I think we gotta try.”


End file.
